"A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" is the work of two master filmmakers. It was the brainchild of the late
Stanley Kubrick
, who conceived and produced it. And it was written and directed by Steven Spielberg.

The film represents the best of both directors -- at first. For a good 30 minutes, it combines the austerity, the crispness, the intellectual rigor and the clean compositions of Kubrick with the humanity and bigheartedness of Spielberg.

By the end, however, "A.I." exhibits all its creators' bad traits and none of the good. So we end up with the structureless, meandering, slow-motion endlessness of Kubrick combined with the fuzzy, cuddly mindlessness of Spielberg.

It's a coupling from hell. Until now, Spielberg had never made a boring movie. With this, he breaks new ground. We can only guess that the imprimatur of Kubrick made Spielberg feel safe to be stultifying and self-indulgent. Spielberg has made great movies, corny movies and silly movies -- and some that were all three -- but this is the first time he has ever forgotten his audience.

Two words: kindly aliens.

That's right, this movie actually indulges in scenes of long-legged, graceful, kindly aliens. They don't take up a lot of screen time, but they need to be mentioned; otherwise, people may buy tickets to "A.I." unsuspecting.

These aliens put their skinny fingers on a troubled boy's shoulder. They tell him comforting things and speak with British accents. If this sounds good, run,

don't walk, to "A.I."

Most of "A.I." is set closer in time, in a somewhat distant but not unrecognizable future. People look and dress about the same as today but drive three-wheeled cars and spend their lives in houses with cold interiors that call to mind Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's place in "Eyes Wide Shut." Human- looking robots are everywhere, relieving people of housework and sexual longings. But they're like the tin man in "The Wizard of Oz." They don't have emotions or affections.

William Hurt, strong in his brief scenes as a scientific visionary, introduces a breakthrough -- "David," a little-boy robot capable of love, played by Haley Joel Osment. Frances O'Connor and Sam Robards, a grieving couple, bring him into their home as a child substitute. The opening minutes are both heartfelt and creepy in the best way. David laughs at odd times and pesters his human mother, Monica, by being smirky and constantly underfoot.

RICH AND STRANGE

"A.I." is rich with possibility in its first half hour, with the strangeness of a robot's being part of a middle-class family raising all kinds of issues. If a person loves a robot, is that pathetic or idiotic? If a person is mean to a robot, is that immoral? And what's the social etiquette? Do kids have a right to treat a robot kid differently from an organic one?

Things deepen further when, in a fairly remarkable little scene, Monica reads David a sequence of words. He is programmed that on the seventh word he'll imprint Monica as his mother and love her forever, and sure enough we see it happen. On the final word, Osment's face softens, and he's suffused with love. Osment is either the best child actor in history, or he's tied with Shirley Temple.

But not long afterward, "A.I." goes off the tracks. The domestic story is dropped, and the film becomes a futuristic "Pinocchio," in which David roams a hostile landscape looking for a blue fairy to make him into a real boy. There are two built-in problems with that as a plotline: 1) The audience knows his search is hopeless, so the search has no suspense or drama; 2) Being hopeless, this is essentially a nightmare story, one of Pinocchio in purgatory. Yet it's directed by Mr. Warmth.

SLICK GIGOLO

The result is a light, heartwarming tone for a story more pessimistic than anything out of Kafka. Jude Law shows up midway as a slick gigolo robot, as though David's journey were a seriocomic odyssey calling for a Jar Jar Binks- type companion. Law may be agile and adept, but the gigolo robot has no business in the movie, and he could easily be cut without any effect on the story.

The middle of "A.I." tries its audience's patience. Yet it's nothing compared with what follows in the last section. Without going into detail, the most vicious parodist of Spielberg could not devise anything more precious, more shallow or more patently ridiculous. It's almost worth seeing just to see how bad it is. Almost.

"A.I." may be an interesting failure, but it's a failure.

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